Khar'thik the Unseen Empire
"We mantid are an elder race. The pandaren you associate with - they are but children. They have their role to play. Each cycle, our young swarm their walls. The pandaren slay the weak. The strong return. With each generation, we grow ever stronger." Khar'thik is the side of the island where the sha run free and the mantid rule absolute. For years the mantid there lived underground to never be found, but since 4,560 years prior to the events of the black portal they started rulling above too. The Khar'thik have the biggest area in the island. Who are they? As the Aqir saw their master being riped apart they recovered one of his claws and hid themselves under the ground. As time went by they began to evolve into the mantid, like the other Aqir around the power of y'shaarj, the ones that took the claw were called the Kharxa'thik, but after they saw their sister kingdoms in war against the trolls they decided to separate into two, the Khar'thik kept the Queen and built their kingdom, the Xar'thik were the guardians of the claw. They built tunnels and were connect like they were just one kingdom, but once the sundering came, their tunnels were destroyed and the claw was burried together with the Xar'thik. The Khar'thik still lives and they took the biggest area of the Lotusheart island. Lotusheart was still part of pandaria when they built their empire. The Khar'thik built their kingdom under them. The first High Queen was the one who ordered the Khar'thik mantid to build the tunnels all the way to the underground city of the Xar'thik. As the claw absorbed the energies of the Heart of Y'Shaarj by being relatively close to it. The Khar'thik and Xar'thik are nothing different than the mantid of the dread wastes, the difference is that the High Queen is usually chosen by her power, also how many eggs she can lay. The council Kharxxi is extremely different from the Klaxxi, they advice the Queen and are not the guardians of the culture, the Imperial Vizier is the one in charge to watch over the queen and if she is corrupted the mantid are to kill her and absorb her energies to empower the next queen. After killing her they do the Kharth'kah ritual where they eat the Queen's body as they believe it is to show honor and to show her respect. 8,000 years prior the events of the black portal, the high queen of the Khar'thik mastered her control over Amber there she started experimenting by putting smaller insects inside Amber and wait if they would survive once released. To her surprise they did, she then had the idea to freeze the best warriors inside a Amber container, a big Amber container with the 100 best warriors. The weaker would be sent to Xar'thik to guard the claw Khar'thik Geography The landscape is dotted with massive Jitsuon trees that produce the amber which the Mantid utilize in many ways. The land is separated from the Pandaren land by a huge wall that also protect them from the Mogu and Saurok lands. The mogu and mantid lands are not separated by a wall, the mantid land is very similiar to ithe mogu land, except that it apparently became twisted by sinister energies and a dark gloom blankets over the land along with a swath of sha-corrupted soil. The Mantid (Pandaria) The mantid are an intelligent and highly evolved race of insect-like creatures who have menaced the people of Pandaria since prehistoric times. While their society has a queen, they don't operate as a hive mind. They are sentient beings, capable of constructing tall buildings and mastering weapons.8 Mantid act with individual cunning, making them formidable in single combat and unstoppable when their numbers converge. Every mantid generation, the young hatch in incredible numbers and then swarm toward the rest of Pandaria, devouring anything in their path. Only the strongest return. Although the ancient mogu managed to protect their lands by building a gigantic wall between themselves and the mantid, the generational swarms require an all-hands defense of the wall or the very heart of Pandaria will be lost. The mantid have poison that chews through the skin and infects the blood. It makes for slow, excruciating death when not treated. Amber : "Back when the world was still young, the first kypari trees bloomed. From the trees, the amber flowed and nurtured us. Kyparite, we called it, the lifeblood of the earth. It healed our wounds and made us bold. It tasted like sweetness and fire, and gave us the strength to conquer all the lesser races." : — Korven the Prime Amber is the cornerstone of mantid society. Harvested from the great kypari amber trees, they use this material in their architecture, their art, and their technology. Amber is fashioned by ambersmiths into sharpened blades and weapons. Some heroes among the mantid are even preserved in amber for a time in need.12 The empress and her council of Klaxxi safeguard the great trees of Townlong Steppes - known as the "kypari" - as the only source of their precious amber. Legend has it that the kypari once flourished east of the wall, but the mogu cut them all down in their never-ending war against the mantid swarm. The mantid prefer to age Kypari sap before consumption, and use special devices for the process. The design has not changed much over time. Mantid society Mantid assaults on the Serpent's Spine are a terrible thing to experience, both as a defender, and as a mantid. Only the smartest, strongest, or most agile of the mantid survive this encounter, and pandaren defenders are slaughtered outright in terrible numbers. Mantid survivors make their way back to the great tress, often bearing trophies of their conquests. There, they are welcomed back into the mantid society, and take their place among their civilization according to the level of their deeds. With each cycle the mantid grow stronger. Those who travel beyond the wall are forewarned: any mantid you encounter beyond the wall is a hardened veteran, to be feared and respected. Mantid are born with little on their mind but a lust for battle. Participation in a swarm is not only a cultural rite of passage - it is the catalyst for their physical maturation. Only those who return from battle can develop from a swarmborn into a fully-aware, individual citizen. Most mantid shed their wings as a rite of passage once they grow strong enough to wield heavy armor and weapons. The mantid view other races such as pandaren as "lesser creatures", and take pleasure in slaughtering them by the thousand. However, they do not consider these lesser creatures to be entirely without purpose, nor is their defeat the mantid's true aim. Rather, the mantid make use of their enemies' defences to cull the weak from their numbers and hone the skills of the strong. As the mantid say: "Battle is an efficient mentor." The purpose of the cycle is not death. It is knowledge. While the mantid do use windwool and imperial silk, their preferred material is a type of "fabric" fashioned from the wings of various insectoid creatures - including themselves. The empress A mantid in the Dread Wastes. : Go together. Swarm the Wall. The strong will return. The weak will not. The lesser creatures must die. Sweep them away. The empress of the mantid is a force to be feared throughout Pandaria. From her the nearly endless hosts of the mantid are spawned. The empress sings to her swarm, giving them purpose, her words filling their minds. Her desires are their desires, and they do not hesitate to obey. The mantid empress gives orders and direction to her swarm from a distance, speaking directly into their minds. She appears to communicate with them through some form of sound, although one that is apparently inaudible to other races. Her communication can be blocked through sufficient disruption of sound of this kind. Though mantid empresses are long-lived they are not immortal. A council of mantid elders, known as the Klaxxi, see to the organized transfer of power from one empress to the next. The exact nature of the exchange is extremely secretive, but it appears to involve a trial by combat, with empresses traditionally displaced in their old age by a carefully chosen successor. Remains of the previous empress are fed to her successor. For this reason the unbroken line of power has extended throughout the entire history of the mantid civilization. Young mantid "swarmborn" are extremely dependent on the voice of the empress. Without her constant communication, they are left in a fugue, milling aimlessly around, and will not even act to defend themselves or their empress. Indeed, the swarmborn are unable even to recognise the empress without her voice speaking from within their minds. : "We are the extension of our Empress's will. Ours is but to serve in Her divine name. Never to question, nor to contemplate; we simply act. We fight, toil, and serve so that Her vision for us is made reality. Her happiness is our reward, her sorrow our failure. We will give our lives for the Empress without hesitation. She is the light, and without Her our lives will be lost to darkness. The chaff of the world tumbles across our doorstep, driven by fear; Her royal swarm will whisk them away. They are but the waves crashing upon the mountain of Her divine will. They may rise again and again; but will accomplish nothing. We are unfazed. We will stand firm. The Divine challenges us to face these intruders. And so it falls to us, Her chosen voice." : - Imperial Vizier Zor'lok Imperial Vizier Zor'lok is the Voice of the Empress, and his words alone inspire the insectoid race's warriors to give their lives without question. Though few in number, the Klaxxi evidently play a pivotal role in shaping and protecting mantid culture. It is unclear if they can directly countermand the will of the empress, however. Kunchong The cycle of mantid birthing and building revolves around the kunchong, a colossal insect large enough to threaten whole towns by itself. The mantid revere this enormous creature, and when instinct compels it to stampede throughout the continent, eating earth, trees, and lakes, they follow behind, collecting the amber-colored resin it secretes, birthing their young and creating their homes in its wake. If other races’ homes are trampled by the kunchong, it is of little consequence to the mantid. Where the kunchong's shadow falls, they walk. Where they walk, the land is transformed. Many of the more mundane pieces of mantid furniture, though amber in color, are actually made from kunchong secretions. Sound Mantid can generate and hear sounds from a much broader spectrum than those available to the other mortal races. Their innate understanding of extremely high and low frequencies allows mantid to create weapons such as the Pulse Generator. The sonic pulses delivered from this apparatus can actually tear muscle and organs apart at the cellular level; direct hits can liquefy one’s innards. Masters of sound, the mantid long ago found a way to use amber to extend the range of their acoustic casting. In this way they are able to communicate over vast distances. No army has successfully marched on mantid lands undetected, and even lone travellers are urged caution as their movements are no doubt being watched the moment they venture beyond the wall. The technology behind mantid sound beacons is incomprehensible for non-mantid races. They seem to rely on mantid physiology.